It's been awhile for me as well but upon inspection it was found to have a circular crack around the decoupling assembly. This was silver soldered and put back into service. However as the antenna was top mounted, over time the noise returned due to flexing at the base.
Our ultimate solution was to replace the copper pipe dipoles with a gain J-pole made out of #12 copper wire and hung inside the radome from the tip. The J was found to have feed line reflections which was solved by adding a coaxial stub at the exterior feed point. This flattened the line and preserved the radiation pattern of the J. A lot of fussing but the end result was a light weight antenna with a gain and radiation pattern very close to that of the original Stationmaster. Jack - N7OO ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2009 2:51 AM Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] Rebuilding a Stationmaster I had to heat the lightning spike with a propane torch, there is a copper rod soldered to a hole in it. Have someone else pulling the thing out while you heat, after you remove the 3 screws already mentioned of course. chris N9LLO In a message dated 9/9/2009 5:35:51 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: It has been a long time, but....I remember that about where the clamp for the ground radials is there are 3? large screws. Remove the the screws and the whole antenna will slide out of the radome by pulling on the RF connector. The black stuff bonds the aluminum mounting sleeve to the fiberglas and you don't have to fiddle with that part. as always - YMMV Best Regards, Eric W1EL Eric Lowell Eastern Maine Electronics Inc. 48 Loon Road Wesley ME 04686 [email protected] www.satnetmaine.com --- On Wed, 9/9/09, hbbcara <[email protected]> wrote: From: hbbcara <[email protected]> Subject: [Repeater-Builder] Rebuilding a Stationmaster To: [email protected] Date: Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 1:01 AM Hi all, The repeater-builder website mentions rebuilding a Stationmaster that has developed noise by taking it apart and resoldering the sections. I have a Stationmaster that has developed that noise so I brought it down the hill. The replacement antenna cured the noise, but it's not the same class of antenna so my coverage area is not what it was nor will that antenna survive the winter. Now comes the project of actually rebuilding the broken antenna. Upon starting to take it apart though, a big question came up. Are there Stationmaster models that can and models that can't be rebuilt? I don't have the model designator of mine. The antenna predates my association with the site (in the context of maintaining it anyway) and the label is largely faded away. I can read "Phelps Dodge" and "Super Stationmaster" but that's about it for the label. The antenna is for 2 meters and is 21 feet, 6.75 inches long from the bottom of the metal base to the top of the metal topcap. The thing that worries me as far as being able to take it apart is that there seems to be something like epoxy between the radome and the metal base. There's a black substance at the junction of the radome to the base and upon taking the three screws out of the side of the metal base I can see the layer of metal, the layer of the black stuff, the layer of the radome and then the inner metal that the screw goes into. Can someone who's taken these apart tell me if that black substance is indeed bonding the parts together and I'm stuck looking for a new antenna, or with all the screws out and just a little more force will it indeed come apart? Thanks for any pointers and 73 rj kb6ytd ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.83/2353 - Release Date: 09/08/09 06:48:00
